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Jason Kenney, once one of Stephen Harper’s key cabinet ministers, had what seemed like the perfect plan to rid Alberta of Rachel Notley’s NDP government.

He would enter provincial politics and unite the right — conservative parties garnered more of the popular vote than the NDP in the 2015 election — and become the leader of a formidable new party.

But that plan isn’t coming together as easily as he assumed it would and instead of uniting the right, Kenney seems to have splintered it even further.

Before Kenney came on the scene there were two conservative parties. The Wildrose is the official opposition with 22 out of 87 seats in the legislature. The once mighty Progressive Conservatives have been reduced to eight seats.

Kenney and his allies had in mind a reverse takeover as when the Reform Party hijacked the federal Progressive Conservatives after an election left them badly wounded.

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In March, after a nasty campaign in which centrist PCs accused him and his supporters of bully tactics and dirty tricks, Kenney captured the PC leadership.

But of course, it was obvious from the beginning that while the Wildrosers were anxious to consolidate the conservative vote in order to defeat the NDP, the party was not about to roll over and let Kenney wag the dog.

The Wildrose is the official opposition, after all. The party has more money and more functioning constituency associations than the PCs do. It also has a leader, former MP Brian Jean, who seems more rooted in Alberta than Kenney does.

Jean revived the Wildrose almost single-handedly after its leader at the time, Danielle Smith, and half the Wildrose caucus crossed the floor to join Jim Prentice’s PCs. A move that disgusted Albertans across the political spectrum and at the time seemed to augur the end of the Wildrose as a political force.

Instead, with Jean at the helm they added to their seat total in the 2015 election.

Since Kenney was elected PC leader (he doesn’t yet have a seat in the legislature) the two parties have negotiated a merger proposal and party members are slated to vote on that proposal on July 22. Both Kenney and Jean are backing a merger — the new party would be called United Conservative Party (UCP). Wildrose needs 75 per cent of its members to agree, a very high bar, while the PCs need only 50.

But now it looks as though there may be a third conservative party by the time Albertans go to the polls in about two years, a development that could take the sting out of the proposed merger.

PCs who don’t like either Jason Kenney’s turn to the right, especially on social issues, or the Wildrose, are hoping to form a more centrist conservative party in time for the next election. About 300 people met in Red Deer on the weekend to discuss next moves for Alberta Together.

Greg Clark, the leader and only elected member of the Alberta Party told the crowd that polarization in politics is “dangerous.” Really? After 41 years of a PC one-party state he is already fed up with competitive politics?

But the nastiest infighting is between the right-wing PCs and Wildrose hardliners. Just last week Kenney told an open meeting that if elected leader of the new party he would propose a strict vetting process on candidates so as to avoid the “bozo eruptions” that have damaged the Wildrose brand in the past.

One of those bozo eruptions involved Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt when last year he agreed with a constituent who publicly lobbed a homophobic smear at Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.

But bozo eruptions haven’t curbed Fildebrandt’s leadership ambitions or his popularity within the party. He’s organized United Liberty and wants to take the new party much further right, into libertarian territory, than Kenney or Jean would.

In the meantime, Rachel Notley and the NDP will continue to joust for ownership of Alberta’s political centre.

But they must also be getting a few chuckles out of the rowdy reality show on the right.

Gillian Steward is a Calgary writer and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald. Her column appears every other week. gsteward@telus.net

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